I hate Jane Austin

This film exists. It is real, I have seen it, I had not done anywhere near enough drugs to have hallucinated something that unreal.

I actually refused to believe that it could possibly exist when I was told about it. It was not until I saw the opening title that I started to come around to its existence. I suppose it could be a very, very long sketch on some totally surreal comedy show I have never heard of, but at an hour and a half that seems unlikely.

I will never ever doubt the depraved and bizarre depths that humans will go to in order to make a buck again.

But once I had got over the shock of finding it, I had the shock of watching it. Now obviously, American Psycho II, I didn’t expect it to be good. I didn’t expect it to be watchable. I was unprepared.

Imagine, if you will, having an angry, rabid, vinegar coated gopher shoved into your face by a sexually frustrated heavyweight boxer. Now put William Shatner into that picture, just to add an extra touch of agony. If there is a hell on this planet then I would imagine it to be a small dark room where this film plays on repeat.

This film was produced by humans. By us. We are all doomed. Doomed to lives of intense and agonizing disappointment.

I hate this world.

I would imagine the title is enough to convey the sentiment of this work. It’s true; I really do hate the bitch. I also hate every other hack who has contributed to what is thought of as “Romance”. Romance is a singularly destructive force, one which can de-rail lives with as much force as an eighteen wheeler with no breaks.

I work in video games, a career which more often than not leads me into the debate “People playing all those violent games must become violent and angry. Look at what it’s doing to our poor children.” Well no one has ever shot me, stabbed me or run me over with a car. None of my friends have ever had a negative experience that they felt could possibly be traced back to someone playing a game. But many, many people can pay testament to the utterly destructive power of the romance myth, the one touted in Pride and Prejudice, amongst other badly constructed prose.

It’s a women thing; yes I’m sure plenty of men have read it too, I know I have (my girlfriend said that if I read Pride and Prejudice she would try reading Sandman: She now loves sandman, I’m trying to go back in time to throttle Jane Austin). But it’s a women’s book and few people will disagree with me here. Maybe it’s the concept of the perfect romance that we feed our daughters which I’m railing against here, but that damned book seems to sum it up totally. The “Perfect Man” who will one day rise from the bottom of every woman’s imagination and sweep them away. Their “Mr Darcy” who will be strong, tall and handsome. A touch of arrogance and a steely demeanour, that melts at the warmth of their touch.

Bull-fucking-shit.

Yes men have fantasies. Yes we all know that in everyone’s mind is an image of the partner that they would love to end up with. We each carry an idea what love means to us, what we would like it to mean in the future. Some men may choose to leave or cheat on the partners because they don’t quite meet their fantasies, but in my experience it is more often because they never really wanted to be with that person in the first place.

It is a women’s reason to leave because she doesn’t know if she loves you anymore. Not because she doesn’t love you, she just doesn’t know if she does or not. This implies a level of certainty that love has never evoked in me, nor most people I have spoken to. Do they really know what love is so certainly? Or is it once again this romantic fantasy of love? It appears to work thus:

If this isn’t what I imagine feeling when I think of love, then what I feel might not be. And since I don’t know if it is or not I will choose the comfort of waiting for the unattainable rather than compromising this image I have Known since I was about six.

Romance ruins lives, by its presence or by its absence. If you are raising a daughter then for the sake of their happiness, for the sake of their children’s happiness and for the sake of any man they may ever meet, teach them about what life is really like, keep them away form Jane Austin’s brand of crap and maybe encourage them to playt a video game once in a while.